Travel Dreams and Nightmares

Excerpts by each of the four storytellers 

1. Riding the ZR by Louise Szabo 
“Instead of going to the beach, let’s do something different,” I told my husband Charlie as I skirted around the maid mopping the kitchen floor. “Let’s go to Bridgetown.” 
“Good idea,” he answered enthusiastically. “We’ll go to the Wickham Lewis Boardwalk, do a little shopping and find somewhere nice to have lunch. I’ll call a taxi.” 
“Take the ZR,” suggested our maid. 
I looked at her as if she was crazy. As far as I was concerned, those ZRs vans, careening full speed ahead, wild music blaring, packed tight with hapless passengers were certainly a hazard on the roads. If I was to take a bus why would I take a ZR? Barbados had an efficient public transportation system with safer choices. The state-owned Transport Board buses and the privately owned buses both looked much more civilized than the ZRs. 
We had seen the ZRs zip along the roads. Easy to identify, they were white with a maroon stripe on the side. Most were old vans that had seen better days. Since they were usually full of Bajans I had always considered them to be more for the use of the local residents than for us foreign tourists. To be honest, they did look like a fun way to travel, but did I want to risk my life? Yet, since they passed by practically in front of our door, maybe the maid was right. 
“The number ‘9’ will get you right into Bridgetown,” she told us as she started to mop the living room floor. 

2. Dear Cousin Robert, by Wendy Quarry 
We all sat together at dinner that night, feeling close and happy but each with our own thoughts. Earlier we had walked behind Rupert’s eldest daughter as she walked with her daughter absorbing the sights of Sesslach. “You know,” she said as she turned to us, “I walk along here and I think of my father leaving Germany and coming to France when he was only thirteen and I am convincing myself that I actually feel German.” We didn’t have anything to say. We realized that in many ways this French and German family was far closer to the enormity of what had happened than any of us from North America. Even though we were beginning to understand at an emotional level why it was so, all of us were struggling with the fact that not one of us had truly known about our Jewish roots. Rupert’s daughter spoke of a time in Paris when she had a Jewish boyfriend. “I have always been proud of my last name, but when this boy asked me if I was Jewish I denied it emphatically. I went home to tell my parents, and Rupert and Malou were white-faced.” Even though Malou was a Catholic from the middle of France and it was long after the war, still they kept Rupert’s Jewish roots a secret. When the boy discovered that Rupert’s family was from Hamburg, he knew. Rupert and Malou had never told their daughters why Rupert’s family had left Germany and here we all were together with none of us knowing a thing about how to be Jewish. Manuela told us that when the landlady of the pension where we stayed in Sesslach had been told that we were all descendants of the Jews of Memmelsdorf, she said in shock, “Oh my goodness, what will I do about food?” 

We left Sesslach a mere four days after we had first driven through those wooden gates. Our feelings were a mixture of sadness and euphoria. Sad that this amazing moment was over and euphoria at finding and liking a family we had no idea existed until recently. 

3. Off the Rails in Hollywood by Jan Jacobson 
I found one of the few vacant seats on the Green Line of the Los Angeles Rail Transit train heading for the Red Line towards Hollywood, and sat down next to a pleasant looking, middle-aged man who was wearing a brown suit. He turned towards me and in a friendly manner asked me where I was from. When I replied I was from Ottawa, Canada, he said “Ah, you must speak French. Say something in French to me.” I said something like “Je ne sais quoi dire”. Perhaps responding to his request hadn’t been the best idea. I quickly removed his hand from my knee and decided against further communication, though I remained in my seat near the front entrance of the car. 

When I was ten years old I was besotted by anything Hollywood. I wanted to be a movie star and had a huge crush on Tony Curtis with his dark hair and blue eyes and on his glamorous wife, Janet Leigh (best known as the shower victim in ‘Psycho’). “What a perfect couple,” I thought. I even wrote them a fan letter expressing my adoration. Many years have passed, but that romantic vision of Hollywood still lingers in my mind. As an adult I wanted to see if my childhood infatuation matched reality, so ten years ago my husband, Zack, and I visited Hollywood as part of a trip to explore California. We flew to San Francisco to start our journey down the dramatic, ocean-swept Pacific coast towards Los Angeles and Hollywood. 

4. Learning to Walk by Barbara Brown 

I was alone on a track high in the Himalayas and couldn’t see either the lake or the waterfall that were our destination for the day. The first three days of the hike had been in bright sunshine but now we were walking through low-hanging cloud. The mist was turning the surrounding hills into the elusive and mysterious paradise that we had all been looking for. The clouds closed in. Several small paths led off at each switchback. I started to feel anxious. Was I still on the right trail? Should I wait for the others? I didn’t want to hike downhill in the wrong direction and have to climb up again. I kept on. Then I heard the waterfall. I was fine. 

Around a bend came a hiker with a fishing pole over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’re almost there,” he called out. Relief and sadness swept over me. I wanted to be on the road to “almost there.” But I wasn’t quite ready to arrive. In a flash of clarity I realized that despite my many doubts, I could do this. I could walk for seven hours at an altitude of four thousand metres. I wasn’t fighting with my knees, my aching back, and most importantly my aching soul. Everything still hurt. But now I knew I would get to camp. I would be okay. I had learned at last, here in the mountains of Bhutan, how to walk at peace with myself.